Naxos's massive 'American Classics' series - now around 400 releases strong
- has rightly received plaudits, and continues to turn up gem after gem that
few other labels would have the financial courage to record - certainly not
in anywhere near the same quantity. Similarly, Naxos's far smaller and underexposed
'Japanese Classics' series continues to produce some fabulous music with almost
every release: not just the more obvious Toru Takemitsu CDs - the Orchestral
Works especially (review)
- but also, for example, Akio Yashiro's Piano Concerto and Symphony (review),
Komei Abe's Symphony no.1 and Sinfonietta (review)
or Masao Ohki’s 'Hiroshima' Symphony (review).

This latest disc, of orchestral works by Teizo Matsumura, is as good as any
that have gone before. Matsumura knew Takemitsu, the only Japanese composer
to have captured the public's imagination internationally - a curiosity, given
Takemitsu's avant-gardism and very infrequent interaction with tonality. Music-lovers
with more traditionally oriented tastes will be relieved to know that Matsumura's
music is nothing like Takemitsu's.

Commissioned by the Japan Philharmonic and premiered in 1965, the Symphony
no.1 is a work of enormous, almost overwhelming power, with a finale that
is little short of terrifying - although the booklet goes a little too far
in describing the notes surging "like a flood, multiplying and amplifying
infinitely". On the subject of odd turns of phrase, the Naxos blurb says,
apparently quoting Matsumura, that the Symphony "evokes the image of
innumerable locusts swarming over the earth." Perhaps it will to some,
but it is at any rate a hugely memorable work that deserves a regular place
in the concert hall.

Unlikely as it sounds, Symphony no.2 was inspired by a poster of the two "sumo-wrestler-like
statues [with] angry countenances and imposing musculature" that guard
Buddhist temples. The notes describe the work as "Matsumura’s spiritual
monologue, full of both sorrow and hope, marking the close of the twentieth
century." The Symphony might be characterised as ambiguous rather than
pessimistic, though its colours are certainly more dark than light. The piano's
presence is not concertante but recursive - often simple and repetitive, for
effective mood creation. The finale is three minutes of inspired brilliance;
the work as a whole is noisy, but tonal and overall, like the rest of Matsumura's
music on this disc, pretty approachable to ears attuned to the European symphonic
heritage that stems from Wagner and Strauss. Perhaps he is most reminiscent
of the great Finnish symphonist, Kalevi Aho.

To the Night of Gethsemane is a third imposing, profound work, a very
European tone poem inspired by Giotto’s fresco The Kiss of Judas, with
the added poignancy of being Matsumura's last orchestral work, a pathos reflected
in the surprising violin solo in the coda.

The reliably excellent RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra give a necessarily
virtuosic, masculine performance, as they have done many times before for
Naxos. They are masterfully conducted by Takuo Yuasa, who has quite a record
already with different orchestras performing Japanese music on Naxos (see
reviews of Toshiro
Mayuzumi, Kosaku
Yamada, Yasushi
Akutagawa or Saburo
Moroi, for example).

Sound quality is good, but the engineers clearly had a difficult task before
them in trying to capture the full range of Matsumura's dynamic and pitch
requirements, and they have not entirely succeeded - some definition is lost
when the music is at its loudest and highest. Nothing drastic, though. The
headphone-listener with sharp ears must accept the occasional bit of audible
humming from Yuasa in To the Night of Gethsemane, but otherwise there are
no noises off anywhere.

The recordings were made while Matsumura was still alive; the notes do not
say whether he attended the sessions, but at least he was probably aware that
these great works of his were being immortalised by Yuasa, the RTÉ NSO and
Naxos. Symphony no.2 is recorded here for the first time - indeed, the notes
say this is the first ever performance of the final revision.

The tiny-fonted notes are informative, though sometimes excursive - the original
Japanese was translated and edited, and then 'adapted' by Naxos, giving a
few melodramatic turns of phrase ("Utterly devastated, he wandered about
for several days with sleeping pills at the ready") and obscure bits
of detail.